Rained nearly all day so I didn’t do anything. Umpteenth day of doing nothing.

Of course, I wasn’t actually doing nothing. I was going to school, for example. Which meant spending a good part of the day with wet legs and wet socks.

This was due, in part, to the curious ‘thou shalt wear short trousers and knee length socks’ culture which, sadly, hasn’t changed. In fact, you would never get away with this uniform policy in the UK, which is not necessarily a good thing (apart from the shorts).

In part, though, it was due to the design of the school, which meant that unless you were going from a science or social science lesson to a languages lesson you had to go outside once an hour just to get to class. Maths and technical subjects were in another block, English and the library in a third, PE in another.

In fact, you even had to go outside to use the toilets. These were housed in another block altogether, thereby ensuring maximum exposure to precipitation for all concerned. It is a wonder that half of the school didn’t go down with pneumonia every time it rained, really!